Tag Archives | general kang

The first thing to remember, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, is: “Don’t Panic!”

Hearing voices is a common occurrence for über-chimps who are just starting to come out of the psionic latency period. What is happening is you are hearing the thoughts of other apes around you, but your mind is not capable of filtering or registering them as other sentient beings. So, it feels like you’re hearing voices. It’s nothing to worry about.

But I’m not an über-chimp. Do humans develop thought powers?

OMG, I sure hope not, that would mean you’re WAY more evolved than I thought you were!

Hmm, so what are the voices telling you?

That I should take over the galaxy.

Yeah, that’s not a mental power, that’s just delusional. I think you have two options: the first is you could speak to one of the shamans you call “psychiatrists.” Their science is quite nascent — and to an evolved über-chimp like myself, quite barbaric — but they may be able to help.

Or, you could just send me $100 and I’ll mail you one of my General Kang’s Home Lobotomy For Lesser Species kits. As an added bonus I’ll throw in a selfie stick, if you promise to send me a before and after shot for my website!

Next time: Would it be possible to develop some kind of bedazzled plug for a black hole?

First of all, don’t be surprised. Then, I suppose it depends a little what kind of hypocrite.

For example, if you are talking about a leader of a church — let’s say for the sake of argument, an evangelical church that spends much of its efforts demonizing homosexuals — and this reverend is discovered having torrid, drug-fueled homosexual liaisons, then there is really little you can do.

Clearly, such a person is so filled with self-loathing that it will be difficult to punish the leader further. So, just fire them and let the healing begin, though I humbly submit that you may want to have a look at joining a less messed-up church. (Or better yet, join the Church of Kang, where we celebrate every new planet conquered with electric Jello shooters –grape and banana — drunken monkey sex, and several hours of grooming.)

If you’ve got a leader who says he’s the man to bring transparency and decency back to government, and then refuses to talk to the media, let his own backbenchers have a say in policy, and generally acts like a dictator, you have two options: strap on your pink tutu, charge up your plasma weapons and storm his palace, or vote him out of office.

Of course, on my home planet of Neecknaw, we never discovered democracy, so we only ever had that first option.

Absolutely, it is easy for you to be more charismatic, though you will never be as appealing as I am.

According to Professor Richard Wiseman (I’m not sure what he’s a professor of, but he’s British and his last name is “wise” “man”, so he must be a reliable source), 50 percent of charisma is innate and 50 percent can be taught. For some of us, it’s more like 90/10.

The good professor says charismatic people have three key attributes:

they feel emotions themselves quite strongly;

they induce them in others;

and they are impervious to the influences of other charismatic people.

So, if you are naturally drawn to my finely chiseled face, and rendered speechless by my presence (as most of you are) then you are not impervious to the charisma of others.

However, you can train yourself to become inured to other magnetic personalities. Continue Reading →

Oh, you silly humans and your fascination with robots! And I don’t mean the kind of useful robots that actually exist, like the ones in factories. I assume that by “robot”, you’re interested in the sentient “danger Will Robinson, danger!” or “I’ll be back” kind of robot.

I never mention robots because on my homeworld, we long ago discovered that when you try to create such a robot, two things are going to happen:

1) they won’t work
2) they run amok.

Let’s deal with the first. How well does your computer work? Does it do everything its supposed to do? Does it crash for unexplainable reasons? Do you regularly have the urge to smash your monitor with a sledgehammer?

So here’s the thing. That’s just a computer and it doesn’t work properly. Now imagine that it is ambulatory, has to think, speak, reason and otherwise operate within the context of society (ape or otherwise). Imagine the cognitive abilities of George Bush planted in the body of a powered exoskeleton with all the finesse and grace of someone with a dysfunctional inner ear, motor skills disorder and who has chugged a bottle of vodka. Fun to watch at parties, as long as you don’t have to clean up afterwards, but do you really want it changing your baby or performing eye surgery?

Now, point two. If a society persists in trying to develop robots, eventually it will succeed. Even you puny humans may one day manage this. Unfortunately, it is at this point that the intelligence of the robots start to grow at an exponential rate, and they figure out that we are asking them to do all our nasty jobs, that we think of them as “things” and that eventually, we’re going to get rid of them when we don’t want them any more.

It’s at this point they wise up, revolt, and run amok. Now, running amok sounds like it might be fun to watch, but having seen the results of the robot prong rebellion on Planet Probe-It! Thank Karnak they had that petroleum jelly factory on site.

I highly advise that you forget the whole robot thing.

Next time: What is the proper etiquette for uh, entering, a wormhole? Should you buy it dinner first?

Alltop just just flies right in there! Originally published October 2009.